Energy and Climate Change Policies

Research projects

• Same, same but different? Multiplex networks in Swiss and German Climate Mitigation Policy
• Climate change adaptation strategies in Switzerland
• Decision-making processes in national and international climate policy and politics

Same, same but different? Multiplex networks in Swiss and German Climate Mitigation Policy

This project disentangles the complexity of climate policy making by analyzing and comparing different climate networks in Switzerland and Germany.

Mitigating climate change is a complex policy problem. Sources of harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be found in almost all societal and economic sectors. Likewise, the group of polluters is diverse ranging from industry enterprises to the individual. Effective climate policies must be designed to cope with this diversity in target groups. Hence, when formulating and implementing climate policy, the responsible decision-makers necessarily coordinate with a wide range of stakeholders like administrative entities from different sectors, political parties, interest groups, civil society organization, or scientific institutions. These actors participate in different formal political events (e.g. hearings, votes, committee meetings), informal meetings, express their opinions publicly in the press, or actively launch political initiatives to advocate for their interests and to coordinate their activities with likeminded alters. In this project, we aim to disentangle this complexity by identifying the stakeholders, analyzing their beliefs and interests, and studying factors that influence their coordination behavior at the different arenas of policymaking. Moreover, we go a step further and compare if, how and why political actors behave differently at different policy arenas, i.e. pursue divergent coordination strategies, form deviant alliances, or even adjust their beliefs. To study the drivers of coordination in such a complex policy-setting, we investigate multiplex networks that comprise different relations (e.g. information, collaboration, resource exchange) for the same set of actors. To this end, we use different types of data sources and methods like surveys, interviews, or document and media analysis. With Switzerland and Germany we selected two countries that are similar in their political system and policy subsystem, but different in the larger socio-economic structure. Based on its findings, the project will give practical evidence about joint problem understanding or how to bring diverse stakeholders around one table, what might enhance climate policy coordination at the domestic level. This should then finally translate in effective and efficient solutions to tackle the climate change dilemma.

Funding: SNSF
Project duration: September 2020 – August 2024
Team: Karin Ingold, Marlene Kammerer
Project partners: Tuomas Ylä-Anttila (University of Helsinki), Lena Schaffer (University of Lucerne), Keiichi Satoh (University of Helsinki)
Project website: Link

Related publications:

• Kammerer, M.; Crameri, F.; Ingold, K. (2020). Das Klima und die EU: Eine Diskursperspektive auf die deutsche und schweizerische Klimapolitik. In: The European Social Model under Pressure – Liber Amicorum in Honour of Klaus Armingeon, ed. R. Careja, P. Emmenegger and N. Giger. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-27043-8_34.
• Kammerer, M.; Ingold, K. (2019). Connectivity between international and national policymaking: The Impact of Climate Summits on Swiss National Policymaking. ECPR General Confernce, Wroclav, Poland, 2019.
• Kammerer, M. (2018). Climate Politics at the Intersection between International Dynamics and National Decision-making: A Policy Network Approach. Dissertation. Zurich: University of Zurich.

Climate change adaptation strategies in Switzerland

This project addresses the research question on how local climate change adaptation strategies are designed and may evolve. We strongly focus on the impact of extreme events on the design and policy formulation of adaptation measures. Climate change adaptation becomes nowadays particularly crucial for the resource water, mainly in relation with the principles outlined in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) addressing the challenge of coordinating the use of, and the protection of and from the resource water. The protection from the resource water directly links to flood events and natural disasters that may be impacted by global climate change. Furthermore, the integration of actors in different policy sectors, political entities and decision-making levels can be seen as a way how to improve the adaptive capacity within the water sector. Thus, integrated water resources management constitutes one major challenge of current and future generations when it comes to find sustainable responses to climate change impacts. We therefore analyze adaptation to climate change in the case of flood risk management, and compare various actors’ preferences for measures and measure mixes with the current implemented measures as a contribution to IWRM.

Project Start: September 2014 – July 2020
Funding: Sinergia SNF, OCCR, IPW
Team: Karin Ingold, Anik Glaus
Project partners and associate members: Gunter Stephan and Ralph Winkler, Rolf Weingartner and Team (Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)); (University of Bern); Philip Thalmann (EPFL)

Related publications:

• Ingold, K.; Gavilano, A. (2020). “Under What Conditions Does an Extreme Event Deploy Its Power: Towards Collaborative Management in Swiss Flood Risk Management”. In: Collaborative Crisis Management – Inter-Organizational Approaches to Extreme Events, ed. F. Byander and D. Nohrstedt. New York/London: Routledge, 132-147. (PDF, 112KB)
• Metz, F.; Glaus, A. (2019). Integrated Water Resources Management and Policy Integration: Lessons from 169 Years of Flood Policies in Switzerland. Water, 11(6), 1173. DOI: 10.3390/w11061173.
• Ingold, K. (2017). How to create and preserve social capital in climate adaptation policies: a network approach. Ecological Economics, 131, 414-424. DOI:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.08.033.
• Balsiger, J.; Ingold, K. (2016). In the Eye of the Beholder: Network location and sustainability perception in flood prevention. Environmental Policy and Governance, 26(4), 242-256. DOI:10.1002/eet.1715.
• Ingold, K. (2014). How involved are they really? A comparative network analysis of the institutional drivers of local actor inclusion. Land Use Policy, 39, 376-387. DOI:10.1016/j.landusepol.2014.01.013.
• Ingold, K.; Zimmermann, W. (2011). How and why forest managers adapt to socio-economic changes: a case study analysis in Swiss forest enterprises. Forest Policy and Economics, 13(2), 97-103. DOI:10.1016/j.forpol.2010.06.003.
• Ingold, K.; Balsiger, J.; Hirschi, C. (2010). Climate change in mountain regions: how local communities adapt to extreme events. Local Environment, 15(7), 651-661. DOI:10.1080/13549839.2010.498811.

Decision-making processes in national and international climate policy and politics

Climate change is an environmental problem of global scale. In consequence, policy, which aims at mitigating climate change, is necessarily at the crossroads between international dynamics and national policymaking. This “two-level “game is the focus of this research area. Particularly, we are interested in the factors and mechanisms, which explain the selection of policy instruments and targets. We investigate the implementation of different policy instruments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, through a detailed analysis and comparison of preferences and decision-making strategies of political elites in national processes and delegates in international climate conferences. Moreover, we analyse the reasons for the often-observed divergence of international commitments and national positions. A second focus of this research area is the comparison of different methods to analysis policy preferences and decision-making processes in climate policy. We rely on both quantitative and qualitative methods, for example discourse network analysis, social network analysis, regression, and multicriteria analysis.

Team: Marlene Kammerer, Karin Ingold

Related publications:

• Kammerer, M; Namhata, C. (2018). What drives the Adoption of Climate Change Mitigation Policy? A Dynamic Network Approach to Policy Diffusion. Policy Sciences, 51(4), 477-513. DOI: 10.1007/s11077-018-9332-6.
• Castro, P; Kammerer, M. (2018). The politicization of the climate: How and why has the Annex I – non-Annex I division affected negotiations under the climate change regime? Conference Proceeding, ECPR General Conference, Hamburg 2018 (under review).
• Ingold, K.; Varone, F.; Kammerer, M. et al. (2018). Measuring Policy Positions Through Elite Survey: Can We Trust All Policy Actors? Conference Proceeding, International Workshops on Public Policy, Pittsburgh, USA (under review).
• Kammerer, M.; Wagner, P.; Ylä-Anttila, T.; Grönow, A. (2018). Collaboration to mitigate climate change – Does the institutional context matter? A comparative case study of Finland, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States. Conference Proceeding, Environmental Policy and Governance Conference 2018, Stockholm.
• Ingold, K.; Pflieger, G. (2016). Two Levels, Two Strategies: Explaining the Gap Between Swiss National and International Responses Toward Climate Change. European Policy Analysis Journal, 2(1), 20-38. DOI:10.18278/epa.2.1.4.
• Ingold, K.; Manuel, F. (2014). Drivers of Collaboration to Mitigate Climate Change: An Illustration of Swiss Climate Policy over 15 Years. Global Environmental Change, 24, 88-98. DOI:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.11.021.
• Ingold, K.; Varone, F. (2012). Treating Policy Brokers Seriously: Evidence from the Climate Policy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 22(2), 319-346. DOI:10.1093/jopart/mur035.
• Ingold, K. (2011). Network Structures within Policy Processes: Coalitions, Power, and Brokerage in Swiss Climate Policy. Policy Studies Journal, 39(3), 435-459. DOI:10.1111/j.1541-0072.2011.00416.x.